this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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It's not much different from downloading and compiling source code, in terms of risk. A typo in the code could easily wipe home or something like that.
Obviously the package manager repo for your distro is the best option because there's another layer of checking (in theory), but very often things aren't in the repos.
The solution really is just backups and snapshots, there are a million ways to lose files or corrupt them.
You should use officially packaged software. That's the safest option.
Yeah when you can, often stuff isn't in it though.
Debian has 60,425 packages. I would recommend that you create a Debian container with distrobox and install whatever you need. If you need newer versions you can use Debian Sid.
Yeah it's often missing CLI tools that are from small devs who can't do packaging.